Re(12): 6 Across by ShackletonIP: 101.109.145.194Posted on May 15, 2016 at 02:12:01 PM by Andy Stewart

I agree that the puzzle deserves all the praise heaped on it above. I thought the messages with their double meanings were inspired. It was a while before the narrative relevance of the last message clicked with me.
I found it harder than others appear to have done. The clues were easy enough, but I faltered at every hurdle in the route to the theme. Instead of focusing on the central cells with the double letters I tried to make something out of the climbing entries, which I thought were coded entries to characters in the story. It was a while before I abandoned that idea and tried the central group of letters in Google, et voilą.Replies: